Edward Luce’s article a week ago in the London Financial Times that is entitled, “Henry Kissinger: ‘We are in a very, very grave period,’” shows, with the very important revelations, how the legendary Henry Kissinger still holds the strings of power influencing both the US politics and, indirectly, the world events.

No one, in my strong view, influenced world political events and shaped world politics, the World Order post Second World War more than that single person, German refugee Henry Kissinger.

However, most interestingly, Henry Kissinger’s star to this day, as a nonagenarian in his mid-90s, refuses to eclipse, let alone faint. As a frail old man, Kissinger continues to trot the Globe in the quiet of back corridor of diplomacy, meeting and dialoguing with world leaders in the examples of Russian Vladimir Putin and China’s strongman, Xi Jinping.

Edward Luce’s article gives ample proof of that as Henry Kissinger appears to greatly influence the Trump Administration’s Foreign policy as most recently culminated in apparently playing a pivotal role in paving the grounds for the recent controversial Trump-Putin Helsinki Summit Meeting.

Henry Kissinger, undoubtedly, have played the major role in shaping our current world order.

To start with, on the crucial energy sphere, Henry Kissinger almost singularly, masterminded a profound transformation in the World’s energy policies, relations and markets. This, by taking the initiative to forming the International Energy Agency (IEA), the brainchild of Henry Kissinger to counter the OPEC stranglehold on the world energy markets in the aftermath of the Saudi 1973 oil embargo.

The IEA was created with members of the world’s powerful energy-consumer industrial nations as a countervailing force to counter the OPEC producers’ dictates on policies concerning oil supplies and the gyrating energy prices. In less than a decade after the Saudi Oil Embargo of 1973, the IEA managed to profoundly change the structure of the Energy Markets as relations between Suppliers and Consumers in the Oil Energy Market seemed ever since to continuously tilt in favor of the consuming countries.

Kissinger’s charting the opening with Communist China of the Mao Zedong era and the pursuits of Realpolitik relations with the Communist Soviet Union succeeding in many rounds of concluded SALTs agreements. All initiatives of the period left their deep imprints on the future of International Relations, balance of powers and the state the world currently finds itself in. Rightly, one can dare say that the current World Order is much of the making of a single man, that of Henry Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger impact on the Arab world and the future of the Middle East with near superhuman piercing foresight and incredible cold calculations could never be underestimated, rather magically surpassed all expectations. Henry Kissinger’s Midas touch, ever since, caused a crescendo of unfolding events in the Middle East that left to this date the Arab World in a permanent state of political chaos and total security disequilibrium. In the meanwhile, Israel alone seemed to successfully operate out of a close to the chest coherent design.

Falling upon Anwar Sadat, the president of the most populous and most powerful Arab state, Henry Kissinger realized the serendipity of the catch having understood the vulnerability and the limited vision of a leader, Anwar Sadat, who was quite susceptible to Henry Kissinger’s influence, shrewdness and machination. succeeding in snapping Egypt out of the Arab Solidarity front that profoundly shook the regional balance of power, the entire Arab World came down crumbling, snapping at the seam with a lost sense of direction.

Henry Kissinger appears to have realised that with the late King Faysal Al-Saud in power in Saudi Arabia, an equally astute and a very shrewd, well-trained and an extremely capable statesman, King Faysal would represent a serious obstacle and a challenge checking on Kissinger’s dubious designs. Given the moral authority that the king garnered in the Arab world and his tremendous influence over Sadat given the Kingdom’s added huge wealth and King Faysal’s posture during the Yum Kippur War, King Faysal would potentially frustrate Henry Kissinger’s plans to manipulate naïve and most malleable Anwar Sadat. This, beside frustrating Kissinger’s long-term plans of eventually succeeding in coming around to enlist Saudi Arabia as the main oil sway producer to pursue a more accommodating oil policy that would, in the transition, complete the restructuring of the oil markets in favor of the large industrial consumers.

Thus, quite miraculously, King Faysal Al-Saud was removed from the Middle Eastern scene falling a victim to an assassin’s bullet that ended the King’s life on March, 1975.

Yet, in consequence and of far-reaching repercussions, as amply elaborated in Henry Kissinger’s voluminous memoires, Years of Upheaval, 1982, Henry Kissinger prides himself in how he succeeded in steering the US Foreign Policy during Presidents Nixon-Ford tenures by managing to exclude the other superpowers, mainly the Soviet Union, France and the UK in participating in discussions for the search of a Peaceful Resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Falling upon the malleable Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Henry Kissinger rendered the Peace initiatives in the Middle East the sole preserve of a biased and a double-standard US greatly susceptible to the influential pro-Israeli Lobbies.

Seymour Hersh, the world’s foremost investigative journalist, revealed in an in-depth analysis of the personality and character of Henry Kissinger; his political mind and the Machiavellian principles of Kissinger in an epic book entitled, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House, 1983.

Now, going back to Edward Luce’s article as had been published in the London daily, The Financial Times, of the roles Henry Kissinger still plays behind closed doors, as I the aforementioned article; it sure comes as a surprise how much sway Henry Kissinger possesses over the Trump Administration’s Foreign Policies. It becomes amply clear reading between the lines how instrumental was Henry Kissinger in paving the grounds for the Helsinki Summit meeting that recently took place between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Below is my take, expressed in bullet points form, of what transpires of Edward Luce’s article:

*The US needed to open on Russia to reach an arrangement with the Russians concerning Syria, the Ukraine and possibly Iran.

*Now that the American allied forces lost the battle of Syria, as the US could never commit troops on the ground, reaching an arrangement with the Russians would be the best outcome. This could equally apply to seeking a Yalta-like wider understanding on the troubling security problems of the Middle East in general, including the Arab-Israeli issues.

*Henry Kissinger met with Vladimir Putin on 17 different occasions as he reports the content of his discussions and talks with the Russian President to Donald Trump and the senior advisors of the Trump Administration.

*The US is attempting to court the Russians to assuage Russia’s discontentments with the US to serve to dampen Moscow’s enthusiastic drive to forming anti-American Eurasian alliances. This, as the Russian-Chinese alliance found strong expression in the formation of Eurasian Groupings, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Eurasia Alliance seems mainly directed at the US and figures among its objectives the creation of a parallel banking system and the dislodging of the US Dollar as the World’s sole Reserve Currency.

*China seems the true rival to the US on different fronts, foremost the economic, military and, foremost, the fierce competition to achieve the world dominance in Artificial Intelligence (“AI”).

*All indications that whoever gets first dominating in AI would virtually dominate worldwide as the Chinese seem to have their act well put together in apparent distinct contrast to that of the Americans that the apparent disruptive policies of Donald Trump appear to undermine the Americans’ drive and ability to be first in dominating the AI field.

*Henry Kissinger seems to indirectly admit that China is on the right track.

*Kissinger seems to see Donald Trump’s policies in a different positive optic signalling a new American departure into a new era. I.e. as quoted saying, “I think Trump may be one of those ﬁgures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences.”

*Henry Kissinger finishes his conversation with Financial Times’ Edward Luce with the following ominous statement, “I think we are in a very, very grave period for the world,” Kissinger replies. “I have conducted innumerable summit meetings, so they didn’t learn this one [Helsinki] from me.”

However, coming from a savvy insider, Henry Kissinger, the above ending statement could signify more American regional wars in the offing, mainly escalating tensions that could culminate into an all-out military showdown with Iran and possibly a potential future confrontation with North Korea as all chips remain on the table.